But Dancing Moose Productions provided the crowd of health care professionals with all the basics Thursday at the West Texas Conference on Aging.

“We’re about to ruin every song ever written for the rest of your lives,” said actor Tim Anderson before the presentation.

Midland College’s annual aging conference provided a day of training and breakout sessions for area health professionals.

“It’s specifically targeted for people who work with the geriatric population and issues there,” said Wendy Wood Collins, Midland College’s director of health sciences. “It’s an opportunity for health professionals to obtain their continuing education and to network.”

More than a 120 local registered nurses, vocational nurses, social workers, marriage and family therapists, nursing and assisted-living facility administrators and counselors attended the all-day conference at the Midland Center, participating in sessions about hearing loss, disaster preparedness and hospice care.

Here are takeaways from the event:

-- Ethics

Annual ethics training is required for all health care providers, and Thursday’s musical provided the basics on obtaining proper credentials, practicing to a specialty, fostering independence and reporting unethical or illegal practices.

One chapter on greed focused on supervision and inappropriate billing practices.

“We bill for an hour, but we supervise for two minutes. That’s the real world,” Anderson said in the skit to show what not to do in the workplace.

The second act followed with chapters about client abandonment, discrimination, seduction, confidentiality and impaired counselors. At one point, the three actors performed Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” to warn about unprofessional client-counselor relationships.

At the end of each chapter, the actors shared quotes, tips and questions from the National Association of Social Workers, which is currently celebrating National Social Work Month, and American Counseling Association.

-- Shortage of health care providers

While ethics remains a top issue for the entire health care field, Wood Collins said filling a shortage of health professionals -- including those who care for the elderly -- in the Permian Basin region is also the focus of many partnering organizations.

The Area Health Education Center, which celebrates 10 years of recruiting students into health careers in 27 West Texas counties, offers continuing education for providers and a summer camp for high school students.

Elisa Williford, director of the center, can always recognize a budding health care professional by the way they respond to gross body parts and ailments. Still, she said competing with the oil and gas industry can be a challenge.

“The oil field pulls a lot of the students from going into college or getting some sort of training,” Williford said.

Part of the challenge is educating students about how many health careers are available, said Jill Skaggs, Area Health Education Center health care coordinator. A booklet from the center provides information on expected salary and required schooling for 103 health careers.

Williford and Skaggs said workers are needed in respiratory programs and science-based clinical lab positions.

“Not all health care professions are patient hands-on,” Skaggs said.

-- Hearing loss

A breakout session on hearing loss started with a woman’s story of struggle in the workplace.

Despite being a loyal and hardworking employee, Linda Belk -- a hearing loss resource specialist with Midland-based Communication Axess Ability Group -- said her former company was not supportive of her growing hearing loss.

“They were presenting me with more challenges hoping I would read the writing on the wall and leave,” Belk said. “It was a no-win situation.”

But Belk said her situation eventually turned into a blessing; now she helps people accommodate hearing loss in the workplace, using her struggles as lessons for employers.

Hearing loss is a serious concern, she said, noting one in six people experience it during their lifetimes.

“It doesn’t happen overnight; it’s such a slow decline,” she said, noting hearing loss can also cause an average loss of $12,000 in economic productivity.

Early hearing loss is also linked to dementia in the elderly, Belk said, adding that if someone has to focus on hearing conservation, they lose their ability to multitask.

Belk described hearing aides as a tiny microphone in your ear, but they don’t give people 20-20 hearing.

“A lot of people have that false expectation,” she said, demonstrating additional hearing devices that can help in the workplace.

A deafness resources specialist from Communication Axess Ability Group was also on hand to talk about the American Disability Act, which takes effect for employers with more than 15 workers.

Mark Dixon recommended people with hearing loss ask employers for help before invoking the act, which also protects employers.

Dixon also shared a story about a doctor who failed to provide an interpreter at a routine checkup, asking the hearing-impaired patient to read his lips instead. The patient died after the doctor gave him medication he was allergic to, said Dixon, who advised doctors and nurses to provide accommodations when needed.

“It’s cheaper and saves lives and thousands of dollars,” he said.

-- Disaster preparedness

A breakout session on preparing for natural and manmade disasters gave health care professionals some tips for survival for their families and patients.

Marry Kipple, who has taught nursing at New Mexico Junior College and Odessa College since 1990, shared information about disaster levels and alert systems.